Hopscotch Interviews: The Hairs

September, 07, 2011 , by Whitney Ayres Kenerly

The Hairs is basically the solo project of Brooklyn musician Kevin Alvirs, who makes irreverent surf pop music about houseplants and dirty hair. Their EP includes the single “Duh x 12” and other up-tempo songs with a mood that I can only describe as “breezy nihilism.”

I spoke with Kevin about his music, hurricane parties, internet porn, and the influence of MTV's Daria on his songwriting.

New Raleigh: So did you survive Irene in Brooklyn?

Kevin Alvirs: Oh yes, we survived Irene. Everyone was making such a huge deal about how it’s going to be so devastating and then I woke up on Sunday and it was just like nothing was really going on. It just seemed like a pretty bad rainstorm so I think we’re all fine but I guess we like to freak out – I don’t know. I’m surviving quite fine. It’s cool. I mean we’re all having hurricane parties. We were trying to get home before the hurricane actually started just because we didn’t want to be stuck somewhere but yes, it was pretty fun to freak out.

NR: Well, I’ve lived in North Carolina all my life so hurricane parties are kind of the norm here.

KA: It’s just like oh, it’s Saturday.

NR: Exactly. Let’s talk a little bit about The Hairs. You were in a band before called Knight School. When did The Hairs begin?

KA: I did Knight School and I started that around 2008, 2009 and I had that band for like two years. I started feeling kind of sick of being in a band in a way. I don’t want to sound like I’m a control freak or anything but I just wanted to do something where I felt like it was totally me and it was going to be really easy for me to invest myself in it. I just started doing my solo project sort of on a lark.

My friends who were in The Drums, they were on this label called Holiday Records and I wanted to start this little side project so I could have a free downloadable EP on their label. I kind of got into writing and recording songs all by myself again. So it sort of just took off, and Knight School kind of dissolved in the meantime, and ever since then, I’ve just been writing and recording non-stop for The Hairs.

NR: I mean this as probably the highest form of praise, but when I was listening to your songs and looking at the titles I thought they would perfectly soundtrack an episode of Daria.

KA: Oh my god. Yes. I mean there’s a bit of that mid-90s attitude that The Hairs embodies. I like that other than someone being like, “You know, your song could sound great with the new 90210."

NR: When describing the album, I wrote down the phrase “Breezy Nihilism.”

KA: I really like that a lot. That sounds totally up my alley. But I guess instead of nihilism, I feel like I care about everything really intensely while I try to – I don’t know. I don’t want to get into therapy on this. I haven’t had therapy in a month so I feel very raw.

NR: Were those types of Generation X shows and music an inspiration for you?

KA: I felt really inclined toward the comedy, like Janeane Garofalo. I wouldn’t say that she’s an inspiration per se but she was, to me at least, what I thought was very original back then. I guess there is this Gen X attitude with me. I live a sort of Bohemian lifestyle, like I’m living to do my art and not really trying to get a job at a huge corporation and work my way up. All the bands that I really love kind of go against the rules, like Guided by Voices and Caveman. Magnetic Fields. All of them seem to just do something that seems personally victorious to me. So yes, there is sort of a Gen X attitude. I guess I grew up in that time and realized what those values were.

NR: I can see that influence in your music. You get on the verge of saying something very serious and then the Gen X inside of you will get very “whatever” about it.

KA: I guess there are big emotions and big things that we all deal with and some people don’t deal with them at all. Some people deal with them a little bit and some people tiptoe and run back. The phase that I was in or that I’m in, it’s kind of weird and hard for me to be so reflective upon the lyrics because I feel like they happen so quickly and I write them so quickly. I feel like I just vomit it on tape and make sense of it much later when things get brought to my attention. I guess this is just a reflection of how I deal with things. Like I know that there are big things or bigger things... I acknowledge that they’re there and maybe they're just not in the right stage to deal with head-on.

NR: The video for “Duh! x 12” is kind of a playful way of talking about this very contemporary theme of the isolation of social media. Could you tell me a little bit about that video and the creative process with that?

KA: Well, my friend Dean, he directed that "Marcel the Shell With Shoes On" video and he wanted to get his feet wet and do a music video. We traded some ideas and nothing I came up with was very solid. Dean is a very headstrong artist so I just kind of took a backseat. I was just going to say yes to whatever he wanted to do because I knew he would have a stronger vision for it than I did.

So, he sent me the outline of the video and I just kind of read through it and I was like, “Oh wow, this reads like a solitary adventure through the internet,” and that’s pretty much what it is. It’s like, we hang out on Facebook. We don't just go to a Facebook page. Some people actually do hang out on there and talk to people and look at photos. It just struck us as being really funny and sort of true so we thought that we should really go for this idea. It was shot pretty quickly and easily. It was all done at Dean’s apartment on webcams. I had no idea how it was going to come out but Dean has a really strong eye for animation. He has great comic timing too with his editing skills.

NR: Is that something you can relate to, spending a lot of time on the internet each day?

KA: Yes. I feel like a lot of my life does exist in emails and paying bills online and keeping in touch with friends through email or Facebook or whatever. Yes, I do feel like that is a constant theme in our lives. It’s like, there are no more record stores so I go to the internet to get music and then I don’t really go to shows that often. I go to YouTube to see what bands are playing and what their stage show is like.

It’s this weird way of living now which I haven’t really thought about as being weird, but now that I’m kind of verbalizing it, it just seems like this meta way of living. It is kind of funny how a lot of our experiences take place around the computer these days. It’s very modern; it's like the new age of things. I do think it’s funny and I think the character of me in my video is just as self-obsessed as I’m sure anyone is, trying to look for comfort through things on the internet.

NR: But finding porno viruses and troll hate mail instead.

KA: Yes, that was pretty clever on Dean’s part. I would never have thought to put that all together but Dean really made that stuff concrete.

NR: What is it like making surf pop music in Brooklyn?

KA: It’s really weird. I live with my boyfriend and I don’t really go to shows as much. I still listen to lots of music when I can and – what should I call it? Yes, there is the dark and the weirdo art pop that’s going on out there. That kind of goes over my head and I don’t even know what makes it good or bad exactly. It’s just not my style. I feel like I have something more in common with the Wavves and Best Coast schools of thought. I just really like poppy songs. I love really catchy songs. I love songs with big emotions in them. I love stuff like that but I’m just not into things that are really avant-garde and crazy obtuse.

NR: You mentioned earlier that Guided by Voices was an influence. They’re playing this weekend. Any other bands you’re looking forward to at Hopscotch?

KA: I don’t know if I’ll be able to see Guided by Voices, but it’s quite an honor to share printed space with their name. I’m a big fan of Times New Viking. I love that band a lot. The Flaming Lips is the band I’ve loved ever since I was in high school. Who else? J Mascis. I think the show that I’m playing is going to be with Kurt Wagner from Lambchop and I can’t really say that I’m the biggest fan just because I haven’t listened to him so in-depth but I really do like what he does. I’ve been in bands for so long, and to play alongside bands of that caliber is kind of like, “What? Really?” I mean Superchunk, I’ve listened to them since before I knew how to play guitar. It’s a bit wild for me. I feel like I played so many shows with bands that I never heard of or that were just neighborhood bands or whatever, and to play this is like, whoa. So that’s all pretty exciting to me.